


Last Chance Of Mine

by withluvsan (lostlovelis)



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: ATEEZ Storytelling Event, Dimensional Travel, Memory Loss, Multi-dimensional universe, Multiple Universes Colliding, Open Ending, The Man With the Black Fedora Hat, ateenagerz, ateez are common teenagers, but with holes on their memories, no beta we die like men, wrote this instead of sleeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:40:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25194058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostlovelis/pseuds/withluvsan
Summary: You can dry a single water drop, but not an entire ocean.The eight boys left her behind. They left their fear of being alone. Even if they were still scared, they had each other and it was more than enough.Until they lost everything again.
Kudos: 3





	Last Chance Of Mine

**Author's Note:**

> This is my submission for the Storytelling Event that happened for the promotion of ZERO: FEVER Part 1
> 
> I hope y'all enjoy it as much as I did while writting <3

_Hearts Awakened Live Alive_

They were lost. Scattered through the dimensions, with their memories broken and half hearts lingering by a thin thread.

Seonghwa knew nothing but that he missed her, their connection. Their signal.

He missed the smell of sweat and blood and tears. The touch of his significant others and their endless happiness. He felt empty.

_Find me._

He could hear inside his own head, calling him from somewhere, but anywhere.

He tightened his grip around the brilliant silver chain on his palm and began to run again, standing in the border of the cliff with heavy breathing and sweaty forehead.

_“Let me go!”_

He screamed, hopelessly. His only answer was the roar of the water hitting the rocks in the end of the cliff. Savage, brutal, _hopeless_.

_Find me._

He jumped, leaving this world behind. This dimension where Hongjoong didn’t exist, Yeosang gave up on everything and Yunho was a distant memory.

He jumped to be engulfed by the cold water and hurtful memories.

_Once you fall_

Yunho held his phone closer, glassy eyes with tears ready to fall. What was this sensation? He felt lost, but found. He felt like something was squeezing his heart and stealing his breath. He felt hopeless.

 _Find me_.

Who? Where? Why?

_Stay._

A dream inside a dream. Who had he lost? Why was he running so desperately?

He felt his vision black out for a second, legs trembling and a painful sob trapped on his throat. Yunho choked on his own air, but also the absence of it. He was scared.

He could see two of them, laying still in the middle of nothing, but then everything disappeared.

Every night, the same dream and the same screams on his head. What was he missing? What was wrong?

 _Find me_.

His phone ringed, a name and a picture in the screen.

 _Seonghwa hyung_.

That wasn’t right. He didn’t knew any Seonghwa. Did he?

Yunho’s mind was fuzzy and tears blurred his vision with blue, and orange, and red, and black and white. It was like looking through a kaleidoscope. It gave him headache.

 _Find me_.

He gave up.

Yunho closed his eyes and jumped into the darkness, feeling his limbs going numb and his body fall, never hitting the ground.

_There’s no way back._

Yeosang didn’t care anymore.

Empty dreams that felt like being sucked into a void. No hope, no dreams, no stars.

The night sky was like an empty blanket. He could see the stars, but would rather avoid them.

_“Why don’t you look at the stars?”_

_“I can’t see the stars. Not literally, though, but I avoid them. Adults say that the stars bring us hope. I don’t want it. It’s not hope, it’s delusion. It will only give people more room to hurt you._ ”

He felt hurt, betrayed.

No more stars.

 _Find me_.

Yeosang hated that stupid voice that followed him everywhere, piercing through his thoughts and poking his brain like a needle.

_Stay._

He heard, on his back, but there was nothing to be seen. However, more voices started to a choir inside his head.

 _Illusion_.

In front of his eyes, everything started to fade like mist. Cool steam brushing on his arms and making him shiver of cold and fear before turning black.

_Everything is just fog and fire_

The car stopped in a gas station and San took the opportunity to run.

With the vehicle turned off, he sneaked out leaving everything behind. His family was moving to a new house in the other side of the country, but it felt so _wrong_.

_“Why were you running?”_

_“I’ll be broken if I leave. I don’t want to leave and lose the purpose they gave me. What am I supposed to do without them?”_

He stopped on his track, lifting his head as he heard a weirdly familiar voice.

 _Find me_.

It was the voice from his dreams and nightmares. The one he wanted to run from.

“ _Please, leave me alone._ ”

He begged, turning around but finding no one.

San heard a buzz on his hears, becoming higher and higher, obliging him to put his hands over his ears, but it didn’t help. It made it worse.

_Stay._

Tears gathered on his eyes, running down his cheeks and leaving its marks on his skin. It was cold against the cool breeze, salty against his lips and desperate falling on the ground.

_Illusion._

He started running again, the buzz against his ear even louder than before, but he couldn’t stop. He knew he was missing something.

What was he missing? Why was he running?

_My Precious._

His feet got trapped on itself, making the crying boy fall in the sidewalk, people glaring at him weirdly, but he didn’t care.

He let himself to be taken by the darkness, ready to discover whatever was making him feel so dizzy and trapped inside his own body.

San was sick of his fake life and was ready to fight again.

_Fear of Tomorrow and Today_

The bills gathering on his desk made him sick, working more than he should and giving everything he had for his living.

Mingi learned on how to ignore the voices on his head, pushing them deep into his brain until they turned into a light buzz.

He told himself he was fine. He also said it to his psychiatrist and to his parents. He wasn’t fine, but no one seemed to care enough to make him stop and talk. _Really talk._

_“Can I borrow this?”_

_Find me._

He nodded to his friend, letting the small blue haired boy hold the Black Fedora hat with cautious fingers. Mingi kept doing his accountability, thinking if his next meal would be real food or a cup of ramen inside of some grocery store.

“ _Where did you got this?_.”

He could hear the voices clearly, but always choose to ignore them. It was easier this way.

_Stay._

“ _I don’t know. I always had it.”_

His friend clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth, making a loud noise out of annoyance. Mingi watched as he wore the hat with swift moves and a devilish grim.

“ _Bulshit. This isn’t something that you can buy everywhere._ ”

_Illusion._

Mingi heard the buzz becoming louder once again, causing the voices to come muffled against his ears. He wanted it to stop. He wanted to finally be able to dream, to rest, to leave this damned place and to be free.

_My precious._

Something didn’t seemed right in Mingi’s perception, like a piece of a puzzle out of its place or forgetting the name of someone who you know by heart. He felt guilty for not being able to remember, to connect those nightmares together.

_Until it overflows._

The boy let himself fall back first on his bed, staring at the ceiling and holding his breath unconsciously. His friend kept talking while looking at himself on his phone’s camera, but Mingi couldn’t hear him clearly. Mingi closed his eyes listening to the voice for a while before everything went black and cool.

_Now we rise like the sun_

Wooyoung felt like he was floating.

His senses were numb and getting up from his bed wasn’t an option.

He wanted his friends back.

 _Find me_.

He tilted his head to stare at his reflection in the mirror embedded on his wardrobe, feeling empty and lonely. The person in the mirror looked back at him with tired eyes.

Even with messed up memories and weak heart he insisted on staying awake. He had to remember at any cost, no price seemed too high at the moment.

_Stay._

He could remember of someone with small moon-like eyes laughing at a bad joke sitting beside of a man with deep dimples and fox-y smile.

He also remembered of high pitched voices, black hair and a hourglass laying somewhere, like a hint. _A clue._

_Illusion._

He thought about how foolish they were on accepting that damn offer with blind trust. They were so _wrong_.

They lost everything they fought so hard to build. Their family was now shattered and gone, lost between worlds they have never seen before. The void didn’t seem so scary now.

 _My precious_.

Wooyoung sat on his bed awkwardly, holding back a sob while thinking about him. The man with the black Fedora hat.

It sounded like a dark humored joke to say that a crew of seven men and their captain fell so easily on their talk, but they sounded so _desperate_ ; just like Wooyoung felt now.

_Until it overflows._

More often than not, a black mask would appear on his dreams, with a few pieces of paper on its side. Wooyoung missed that mask, just like he missed his soulmate and his best-friend. They made him _whole._

 _Our treasure_.

With a loud gasp, he sat up straight coughing, vision blurry and such a strong headache that made him want to throw up.

Wooyoung felt his lungs being clenched and his head becoming lighter, giving him a false sensation of sleepiness and tiredness. It was like drowning in the dark, alone.

_Coming to you_

He knew he wasn’t entirely alone, but it still felt like losing his parents in the middle of a supermarket.

Sweaty of his basketball training, Jongho sat at the bench outside the court and stared at the ground, searching for answers he knew he didn’t have.

“ _You are too young to know. You can always trust me, you know._ ”

When the tall boy with peachy hair told him they had never met before, Jongho panicked slightly before apologizing and running away from the stranger. The sensation of failure clung on his chest fiercely for the rest of the afternoon because he was _sure_ he knew the man.

He didn’t have a name, neither an address or any other sort of proof of who he was and how they were related. He simply knew.

 _Find me_.

He wrote in a small diary everything he could remember about his nightmares and dreams.

From the boy with light gray hair and pained smile, a ship with a large black and white flag to a man with deep voice and an angel’s appearance; he kept record of everything.

 _Stay_.

He pleaded for a direction, something to show him the right path and the reason why he were left behind, with nothing but an excuse.

“ _Protection._ ”

They said. Lies.

The man with a black hat didn’t appear so often anymore, being replaced by little things that made Jongho’s hands turn into fists quite swiftly.

A letter. A hourglass. A map.

_Illusion._

This place, he knew it wasn't his. Jongho didn't have the feeling of belonging since a while ago and had looked for ways of leaving. He missed the ones he once knew.

_My precious._

Tired, he got up; ready to make his way home. Jongho gathered his bag from the floor and started walking in the direction of the dress room, knowing pretty well that he needed to take a shower before leaving.

Even when he tried to forget everything, the voices kept coming back, following his track and making themselves visible.

 _Until it overflows_.

Once Jongho put his hand on the doorknob, he felt a shiver run down his spine, a cool breeze passing by made him stop and look around. It was early July and the weather hell-like. Where did the cold wind come from?

_Our treasure._

He wasn’t scared, not anymore. He was lonely, broke and lifeless, but he wasn’t scared. All Jongho wanted was a way to contact his friends, his real family that vanished in thin air once they took that damned objects from the white man.

_Our destiny._

Behind the door everything was pitch black, like the night sky, and Jongho felt something pulling him inside, calling him eagerly and waiting for him to accept the invitation.

He took his first step into the darkness with nothing but hope.

_Calling our name_

So long has passed after they lost everything and found everything in each other.

So many dreams that we’re crashed. So much hope lost. So much love found.

Hongjoong held his head up, chin high and brilliant eyes. They did it.

They lost themselves inside their own minds, their own fears and nightmares and still did it, because they were powerful together.

You can dry a single water drop, but not an entire ocean.

The eight boys left her behind. They left their fear of being alone. Even if they were still scared, they had each other and it was more than enough.

Until they lost everything again.

_Our name is…_

Hongjoong woke up startled, breathing heavily and trying to locate himself.

Fan. Computer. Couch. University submissions.

He was on his place once again, awaken in the middle of the night after falling asleep on the couch with half of his assignment done and heavy eyelids.

“ _Run._ ”

He heard, but the voice was strangely familiar, echoing inside his head for a moment before he appeared out of nowhere. A man dressed in black.

“ _Find them. Run._ ”

Hongjoong yelled in pain, holding his head that felt like someone was trying to crush against a wall.

Seven faces lit up on his mind, with voices he had never heard before. All of them trembling with loneliness, fear, but also burning passion and a feeling of belonging. Hongjoong wanted that. _Belonging_.

Each of them kept repeating a few words endlessly, like a crying choir of lost souls.

_Find me._

_Stay._

_Illusion._

_My precious._

_Until it overflows._

_Our treasure._

_Our destiny._

Hongjoong stared at the hourglass in the hand of the man in black, trying to give himself an answer to his questions.

_Promise you will find me._

Who did he lost?

_We choose to stay._

Where did they go?

_Nothing is real. It’s an illusion._

His world was this one, wasn’t it?

_My precious crew._

His chest heated up, the man still glaring at him with fierce eyes.

_Let’s fill ourselves with it until it overflows._

He wanted back what he lost, at any cost.

_This is our treasure._

Because it was everything he ever had.

_Our destiny._


End file.
